US Veterans Affairs Secretary: Don't Ask Me How To Become A CEO. Focus On This Instead.

This piece is part of my #ExceptionalCareers Series, which offers perspectives and tools for building a career of meaning, service, purpose and growth. 

Bob McDonald has an exceptional career that began as a cadet at the US Military Academy at West Point to CEO of Procter & Gamble to the current head of the US Department of Veterans Affairs.  He was also Chair of the Board of Visitors at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business from 2011-2012.  

So, when Bob was at Duke last fall to speak with our MBA students at Fuqua's Consequential Leadership II core course done in conjunction with the Fuqua/Coach K Leadership & Ethics Center (COLE), I interviewed him to get his thoughts on building a meaningful career.

Here's a capture of our conversation:

Bob, too often, our society causes us to fall into the trap of measuring career success purely in terms of title, level and financial worth.  I see this generating a lot of the anxiety among many millennials as they are navigating their careers.  And these external measure also drive their focus.

Exactly. It’s always “Tell me how to become a CEO.”

But, that's not the right question. 

Not only is it not the right question, but also that focus means you will not become one. 

So what should one’s focus be in order to build an exceptional career?

Well I don’t know that I’ve had an exceptional career or an exceptional life, but I would say that you’ve got to decide what the measure of success is.  Early on in my life, in my career, I decided the measure of success is how many people I can help.  And that has led me to lead larger and larger organizations. 

The VA department is about 3 times the size of Procter & Gamble. What I worry about is young people allowing society to define success for them. I think we as individuals have to define our own success and for me success is about living my life to a set of values with integrity and it’s about helping other people. It’s not about a title or a position. In fact when I would talk to people at P&G, or people at business schools like Fuqua, I would say “Don’t wish for a title, don’t target a position because by the time you’re ready for that position, the company may have changed and that position will no longer exist.” 

Or “If you want to be CEO too hard, you probably won’t become it.”

Your ambition has to be for the organization, not yourself. If the ambition is for yourself, you're not going to achieve anything; no one will follow you because you will be an inauthentic leader. So I think the best thing to do is decide what your personal satisfaction is, define your own success, factors and follow your purpose to achieve that end rather than allowing external factors to define that end for you.  

So, what are some of the non-negotiables that are key to doing that?

I want to underscore the importance of living a life of character, and I’m going to talk about that in my talk, living a life of character and purpose. Character meaning putting the needs of others above yourself and taking responsibility for things that happen. I think it’s very important to be able to look in the mirror in the morning and say “You know, I’ve done the very best I could, I’ve lived a life of character, I’ve tried to help others, I think that’s why we’re here, and I’ve led my life with integrity.” 

I always think back to the movie Saving Private Ryan where the character James Ryan is in the graveyard at Omaha Beach looking at the tomb of the captain who helped save his life saying, “Tell me that I earned it.” In the end that’s what it’s all about, have we earned it. Every day I think about that, and I want to live my life in such a way to at the end feel that I’ve earned it.

Things are happening at such a fast pace, with so many increasing demands and time and I know your family and friends are always part of what is important to you. How do you stay centered?

I think the way to stay centered is to come in touch with your own beliefs. In fact what I’m going to be talking about today (with the Fuqua MBA students) is encouraging every individual to find what their personal purpose is in life and to understand what their core beliefs are. Our core beliefs tend to drive our behaviors, but oftentimes we behave without ever thinking back as to how we developed those beliefs. Those beliefs tend to come from cathartic experiences in our lives and oftentimes we as leaders aren’t introspective enough. 

One of the things I try to teach is the larger the organization you manage, the more deliberate you need to be about you’re leadership, the more introspection is required to really understand what your core beliefs are and what those cathartic events are. Noel Tichy wrote a book called The Leadership Engine, which talks about the importance of storytelling in leadership and these stories come from those cathartic events.

So, my plea to audiences is this - rather than allowing your leadership to expose itself serendipitously, it would be a lot better to be more deliberate, think about what those cathartic events are, how it led your beliefs and literally write it down, share it with people you love and get their feedback. Keep it over time; I’ve kept my list of ten beliefs for 25 years or so.

So what are some of those beliefs?

• Having a purpose matters greatly.  And, understanding that purpose in terms of the story you tell about yourself.  This purpose and story has to be grounded in a set of values.  
• Character is the most important leader attribute.   
• Diversity, in all its forms, is essential and creates the conditions for innovation and creativity.  

Thank you, Bob, for sharing your time and thoughts with us.

To view a five minute video version of the interview, click here.

So, readers, if you were to write out your ten beliefs for guiding your career, what would those be? #ExceptionalCareers